Baobab, Mungo

• Appeared in:
  
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  CW

• Homeworld:
  Manda

• Species:
  Human

• Gender:
  Male

• Weapon:
  Blaster pistol, seed pistol

• Vehicle:
  Caravel

• Affiliation:
  Baobab Merchant Fleet

• 

From the Expanded Universe

The name Baobab commands respect in many sectors of the galaxy. The Baobab Merchant Fleet once had a sterling reputation as one of the most reliable shippers, and the Baobab Archives are considered extensive and authoritative. Some of the elders of the storied family thought that Mungo Baobab's recklessness and ambition could have been the family's undoing.

The early days of the Empire were a trying time for the Baobabs. The Merchant Fleet was facing financial difficulties as interstellar shipping transformed with the Imperialization of the Trade Federation. Shipping firms loyal to the new Empire were awarded the most plum contracts, while the fiercely independent Baobabs had trouble currying favor with the nascent regime.

At the time, the young heir to the dynasty, Mungo Baobab, seemed incapable of seeing the bigger picture, as his attentions were scattered by irresponsibility. To instill in him a sense of propriety and work ethic, the elders of the Baobab clan sent him to Biitu to establish a mining operation and trading post. He befriended the primitive Biituians, and worked hard to develop a mine that would share the wealth of the world among all its inhabitants.

The Empire arrived and installed its own mining operation, overseen by the droid tyrant, the Great Heep. The huge industrial droid employed brute mechanical means to harvest the ore, and used an immense contraption to suck away the moisture from the air over Biitu's farmlands in order to cool the machinery. Biitu entered a terrible drought. The efforts of Mungo Baobab and his droids R2-D2 and C-3PO destroyed the Great Heep and stopped the Imperial ravaging of Biitu.

Following that incident, Baobab developed a single, overriding obsession: discovering the location of the fabled Roon system. A world concealed in the dense dust cloud known ominously as the Cloak of the Sith, Roon promised unthinkable wealth in the form of its extremely prized Roonstones -- crystalline gems capable of storing vast amounts of data. Baobab hoped to establish a trade route between the Baobab homeworld of Manda and Roon, replenishing the Baobab coffers.

Mungo scoured his family's archives, compiling clues and leads to piece together a map to the Roon system. With the help of Artoo and Threepio, Mungo piloted his starship, the Caravel, into the Cloak of the Sith. He followed the tenuous trail of the rainbow comet, a natural stellar phenomenon said to lead directly to Roon.

Inside the cloud were a number of lightstations -- beacon-equipped space stations to guide the way. Asteroids and radiation storms crippled the Caravel, and the ship was pulled aboard a lightstation run by an unscrupulous Roonan official, Governor Koong. Koong was in the midst of concerted diplomatic overtures to the Empire.

The unsophisticated Koong mistook Baobab as an emissary of the Emperor, a confusion that Baobab made no effort to clarify. The arrival of the Emperor's true emissary, Admiral Terrinald Screed, led to an awkward situation. An enraged Koong captured Mungo and his droids, and imprisoned them aboard the lightstation.

With the help of a fellow captive, Noop Yeldarb, Mungo was able to escape his shackles. In the process of fighting his way out of the lightstation, the engine reactors of the space facility were catastrophically damaged. The station lost its placement and began spinning towards an asteroid. In a mad dash to leave the doomed installation, Mungo was unable to get to his ship -- it had been commandeered by a desperate Koong. He instead returned the favor by stealing Koong's cloudcraft.

Safe, but in a ship with limited range, Mungo despaired that he would forever be adrift in the Cloak of the Sith, but Yeldarb rewarded the young trader's rescue efforts. He pointed him to the location of the Roon system, and soon continued his treasure hunt.

The cloudcraft, not responding to security hails, was shot down by Koong's drone fighters and crashed in a mud field in Umboo province of Roon. The vessel remained intact, and was found by the Umboo natives Auren Yomm and her father Nilz.

Young Auren was impressed by Mungo's athletic skill and determination. She invited him to attend the Roon Colonial Games, where she was a favored competitor representing the rebellious Umboo province. Governor Koong placed great stock in the Games. He planned to have his athletes from Tawntoom province trounce Umboo, defeating the rebels and crushing their spirits. One of Koong's underlings poisoned two of Auren's athletes, leaving Mungo and C-3PO to take their places. Mungo won the competition, securing the admiration of the Umboo people.

Mungo's obsession became a growing concern to Auren, who started to develop feelings for the trader. As they were to part ways, she gave him a gift of a Roonstone. Learning that the stone came from an old hermit living in the spooky Bantha Graveyard, Mungo set off to investigate.

The hermit turned out to be "Old Ogger" Baobab, Mungo's great uncle. He had crashed on Roon 60 years earlier, on a obsessive search for the source of the Roonstones. He asked Mungo to continue the quest, but prophetically warned not to place lust for wealth before of the value of friendship. Ogger then succumbed to old age and died, leaving behind a treasure of six bags of Roonstones.

With the clues and supplies that Ogger left behind, Mungo continued the search, leading him to the Roon Sea. Narrowly escaping Governor Koong's slave-driven ocean-going galley ship, Mungo was forced to make a difficult decision when his boat was dragged toward an enormous whirlpool. He sacrificed the Roonstone-laden sacks to lighten the boat, allowing him and his friends to escape.

Governor Koong's next despicable plot to impress the Empire involved poisoning the Umboo countryside with the biological agent, rooze. But the bumbling tyrant managed to infect himself with the toxin, prompting him to order Nilz Yomm, a renowned doctor, to develop a cure for him. Nilz and Auren were taken as prisoners to his fortress, nestled in an ice-covered volcano in the province of Tawntoom.

Mungo and the droids followed, and managed to steal the rooze cure and free the Yomms. During their rescue attempts, they found the true source of the Roonstones. All this time, the stones were buried beneath the volcano ranges of Tawntoom, unbeknownst to Koong.

Baobab tried to hatch a deal with Koong. In exchange for the return of the Caravel and a promise never to harm the people of Umboo again, he would hand over the rooze cure to Koong as well as the location of the Roonstone cache. At that moment, Screed double-crossed Koong, placing the whole compound under Imperial control.

Enraged, Koong scrambled aboard a drilling platform and began firing at the crystal cache. The crystals fell into the volcanic floes, forever lost to both Koong and the Imperials.

Baobab escaped with a single Roonstone, which proved to be a great treasure. Inside its crystalline structure was encoded the earliest known text of Dha Werda Verda, an epic poem that predated the formation of the Republic and the colonization of Coruscant. For finding compelling evidence of an otherworldly ancient source of the Roonstones, Mungo Baobab's name was firmly secured in the history texts.